Ilaine

Joe, Fields of Athenry looks interesting, but I don't live in their delivery area. Also, I am not able to drive. The drop off point in Old Town would be convenient but we have had bad luck with coolers in Cross Fits. We could drive to the farm on Saturday, but Purcellville is quite a haul for us. I could persuade my husband to do it but I would need a good reason. Polyface Farms is cheaper and delivers to a more convenient site, but Fields of Athenry does have some items which Polyface does not, e.g., pigs feet. I dunno, maybe I can sweet talk him into driving to Purcellville Saturday. Edited to add, he said yes. So, what do you like there?

Thistle, for you, this excerpt from Nourishing Broth, a new book by Sally Fallon, high poohbah at the Weston A. Price Foundation, a recommendation for making beef bone broth in a pressure cooker: I'd like to share my way of making bone broth in a stainless steel pressure cooker: I cover the bones with water and ½ cup apple cider vinegar, cooking chicken bones for 1 hour and beef bones (beef ribs make the nicest broth) for 2 hours. It's important not to let the pressure cooker get dry! After the broth is finished and cooled, I take out the large hard bone pieces and discard them. I then take the broth and soft bone pieces and process them in a blender to make a gruel. Then I put the gruel through a strainer, transfer the gruel to freezer bags, and freeze it. This broth can be used in any recipes that call for water. I use it in bread , rice, and spaghetti sauce. For soups, I cook up organic potatoes with the skins and process them in a blender, then add the bone matrix along with mixed vegetables. This method keeps the bone gruel from settling to the bottom and makes an extremely nutrient-dense soup without the unpleasantness of bone fragments. "”Bonnie Engels, Big Rapids, Michigan Morell, Sally Fallon (2014-09-30). Nourishing Broth: An Old-Fashioned Remedy for the Modern World (Kindle Locations 3723-3730). Grand Central Publishing. Kindle Edition. Ilaine again: by the way, if you become interested in the art and science of bone broth, this book is highly informative about the health benefits of bone broth. In fact, it is quite science heavy and the recipe section is rather short in comparison. I did become intrigued by the possibilities of pig feet, calves feet, and chicken feet, and am hunting them down.

Minerals and amino acids. Glycine. Gelatin.

I suppose I could ask how they make their broth. Bone broth is sort of above and beyond most broths, seems to me. You start with roasted bones, preferably ones with marrow and cartilage, and simmer for at least 24 hours. Also you add vinegar to the water to leach out as many minerals and amino acids as you can. Also, as expensive as it is to make your own broth at home, it's much cheaper than buying it. The bones we brought back to Whole Foods totalled about $15 for close to five pounds, which would make several quarts. Polyface is even cheaper, $1 a pound for chicken feet. I wonder how hard it is to cut beef shanks with a butcher saw by hand? Edited to add, there is always Korean bone broth, although almost definitely not from grass fed animals.

Only three weeks into at least eight weeks of non-weight bearing recuperation from foot surgery, and running out of bone broth. I am certain that bone broth will help me heal faster and better. We were going to make a batch last weekend. Bought five lovely packs of marrow bones and knuckle bones, grass fed beef, from the Whole Foods in Springfield, last Friday. Opened them up Sunday, every last pack was spoiled. We have had spoiled meat from that store before, we won't buy meat from them again. Looking for a good source for bone broth ingredients. Especially interested in cartilage and marrow. Preferably from organically raised, grass fed animals. We can get chicken feet, backs and necks from Polyface Farm Buyer's Club but delivery won't be until Wednesday 10/29/14. Unfortunately the only beef bones they have are whole shanks, and I doubt we can cross cut them. No pigs feet. Springfield Butcher has chicken feet by the case, only, 22 pounds, and can get pigs feet by the case as well. I don't have enough freezer space for a case of feet. Suggestions from you Weston-Price types out there? (I can't be the only one.)

Looks interesting, but what we have too many of are Habaneros and something I don't remember that is long and skinny. Both turning bright red. I don't actually use hot sauce myself, my husband is the chile head, he will eat habanero peppers whole and raw. Thinking of suggesting this to him.

We had a really good time. Excellent food, perfect weather, and marvelous company. Bonus, tonight for dinner, some of Zora's prize winning corn cakes with crema, topped with some of Thistle's should-be-prize winning pulled pork. Really hit the spot. We missed the people who couldn't make it, but the small crowd was intimate and congenial. Sweet. Just wish I had taken home some of those killer green devilled eggs with ham, but they were gone!

Ratatouille and corn pudding in the oven. Found the sterno and the frame for the aluminum pans. Bought four cheap plastic large serving spoons and two spatulas. Have tons of plastic eating knives, forks and spoons. Have a case of bottled water. Bought a case of beer. Will bring ice chest and ice for beer in the morning. Need to remember beer opener. Is there a problem with glass? This just occurred to me. Need to remember index cards to state ingredients on dishes. Anyone have name tags?

Honestly I feel torn. It would be nice to see people and share food, but I have so much to do to get ready for my foot surgery next Tuesday, I wasn't planning on spending much time there anyway. If the consensus is to cancel, I can do that without a problem. If the consensus is to carry on, we are planning to bring, instead of caprese, something more substantial, ratatouille and corn pudding.

I will be there +1 but in a wheelchair. Possibly +2, tbd. Can't fit both wheelchair and grill in vehicle so husband will make caprese. Bringing odds and ends from cabinets and pantry hoping they will find a good home. Since I reserved the spot, what time should I be there? Will also bring a case of bottled water and a case of beer. I will also bring plastic eat ware. Serve ware too. Anybody bringing ice?

Thank you all for your thoughtful suggestions. I have placed many of them on reserve at the public library. Well, so far have read the Circus of Dreams, and it was well worth the read. Lyrical and evocative. Still waiting for surgery, but with a broken foot I am not going far from my chair.

Need to lay in a stockpile of books. Thinking of rereading Jane Austen and Borges, some popular but not TOO trashy new stuff. I like Philippa Gregory, Bernard Cornwell, John leCarre. Fantasy is fine, horror isn't, no mass murderers or hit men, please. No shades of grey. Nonfiction tastes run to cookbooks, economics (think Michael Lewis and Freakonomics), John McPhee. MFK Fisher, Harold McGee, John Thorne, stuff like that. Any and all suggestions welcome. Don't hold back please. I have read minimum one book a week, maximum one book a day, for 50+ years. Even if I read it before, I can read it again. What are your favorites? --- [The following posts have been split into separate threads: Flann O'Brien (The Hersch) "The Voyage Out" (Ilaine)]

If we come, we are bringing a grill. I say if because the foot surgery I had in January failed, and needs to be revised. Presently scheduled for 9/30/14, but am trying to get it moved up because I am in pain. My impression is that BettyJoan is organizing and all I did was reserve C-2. I hope so, as I am not up for it.

The story so far . . . . well, it seemed to start innocuously, and joyously. First, there was a new Penzey's in Rockville. Kind of a treck from Fairfax, so I bought everything I thought I might want in the reasonably foreseeable future. And then, younger son moved to Richmond, and there was a Penzey's in Carytown. And then Penzey's in Falls Church. Not to mention experimental purchases at ethnic markets, things I had never seen before, and was curious about. Well, you might guess how it turned out. Cabinets, and I mean, cabinets, full of herbs and spices, just languishing. You probably wouldn't have guessed that I arranged them, not just alphabetically, but also by category. In little organizer baskets. Starting with arrowroot and ending in za'atar. I even typed out a list and taped it to the inside of the cabinets. Filled up two pages. Document created 8/1/2010. You might also have guessed that dried herbs don't really last for years. After my mother moved to assisted living, I decided to end my hoarding ways. Yesterday I hauled everything out of the cabinets, put it on the dining room table, along with the compost bucket, and started throwing things out. I kept the stuff that still smelled good, like whole nutmeg and whole star anise and whole coriander (green AND black). Well, what I did was dump the contents into the compost bucket (filled it up twice), recycled all the plastic containers, recycled all the glass jars but Penzey's jars, and soaked and washed all the Penzey's jars, lids, and shaker tops. Of which I now have 25. Yes, I counted. My question to you, dear Kitchen911 divas is, do I really want to save 25 clean glass Penzey's jars, complete with shakers and lids, and if so, for what? Or is this just another form of Extreme Hoarding? (I am also going through all the rest of the cabinets and drawers, intending to bring every obscure gadget I haven't used in decades to the DR fall picnic, but that's another story. Cannot decide on the falafel maker, but the tortilla press stays. Even though I have never made a tortilla in my life.)

When Mount of Lebanon opened after the Lebanese Butcher burned down, we went once and were not exactly impressed. The space was cavernous, the service spotty, the menu huge, the food variable. Went back last week. They've changed it almost entirely. Now, the vast cavernous space is the grocer and butcher. The restaurant is much smaller, the menu shorter, the service tighter and more attentive. I ordered kibbee nayee, lamb brains, and lamb heart, kidney and liver. Others at the table ordered hummus with meat, grapeleaves stuffed with rice and meat, and shwarma. Impressions: the shwarma was excellent, as it always has been. Same for the hummus. The little touches, the fresh pita, the creamy and astringent tahini, the crisp pink pickled turnips, really make these dishes. This was the first time we tried kibbee nayee. My husband ate it all, and it was a very large serving. He loved it. It's very fresh and well prepared, smooth and uniform. Nobody but me tried the heart-kidney-liver-combo. I still don't like liver or kidneys, and was not able to pick out the heart since all the pieces were chopped and sauteed together. If you like kidney and liver, it's well prepared, just wasted on me. I was enjoying the brains, which were braised or poached, creamy and delicate, when I noticed that my son was holding his menu between us while we ate so he did not have to look at them. Well, they do look exactly like what they are, brains. I asked the waiter to wrap them up to go. My husband was not feeling well so I drove him home and did not get a chance to shop in the store, but it appears to be the most comprehensive Middle Eastern grocer in Northern Virginia. I did get a chance to ask the butcher whether they carry sweetbreads and he said I should order them in advance since they sell fast, but they did have a container of lamb brains inside the butcher's case. The butcher department is well known for the quality of the halal meat.

My husband drove me around this week, from Fairfax to Richmond to Woodstock, VA and back, for court hearings. On the way I read my iPad, and Yelp's app is genius. You can search by location and it will show the results as numbered dots on a map which you can touch and it will open up the page for that dot. You can drag the map to a new location and search that location as well. All those clever programmers, programming their little hearts out, bless them. But the beauty of donrockwell.com is depth and trust. Yelp is shallow and iffy, donrockwell.com is deep, thoughtful, and trustworthy.

Sorry, Don, but I use Yelp and Urbanspoon for inspiration when travelling. I like farm to table restaurants, so that's the Yelp search term I use when looking for a restaurant on the road. Without it, I would not have found Hamilton's in Charlottesville for Sunday brunch yesterday, which we enjoyed. I don't typically review restaurants unless I have been there more than once, but Hamilton's was ace. I also used the same search to suggest Zynodoa in Staunton later this week. Yes, sales types play ugly sales games on the internet, have done so for as long as I am aware and I doubt anybody can stop it. But. lookit, I am in my car looking for food hundreds of miles from home. Who's there for me? I discount the kids and fools who have no idea how far their dollar should go and have no idea what an actual human being experiences whether owning a restaurant, cooking a meal, or serving it. Also the brittle types who vow deadly revenge for imagined slights. Not hard to spot. And, truth be told, their interface is a lot easier to access from my phone. Which doesn't make them superior in any way, just easier. Saved me from a lot of fast food hell.

Sunday, July 27, 2014, Jackson 20 had a crab feast. Reservations in advance, I tried to buy another one at the last minute for my son's girlfriend, it was sold out, so, naturally, I expected to find a place to sit. It started at 6:00, we got there at 6:30, and there were multiple rectanguar tables stretched out family style, and exactly two empty spaces facing each other but no place to sit. We stood around for a while and eventually someone brought chairs. We had missed the oysters Rockefeller, too bad, but at the very end of the meal were brought some, quite nice. There were big trays with lots of boiled crabs but nothing to eat them with, so I ate some sausage and corn and potato with my fingers. All perfectly OK. Also very large boiled shrimp, quite succulent, and the cocktail sauce was house made and good, thick with herbs and spices. Eventually we were brought beer and given mallets (no knives) and set in on the crabs. Which were a singular disappointment. They were small, which is OK, but of all the ones I tried, only one was meaty. The rest were so light that I could crush them with my fingers and they went *squish*. I filled up on more shrimp, corn, sausage and potato, and, eventually, the oysters Rockefeller. At the end of the meal, the manager asked us how it was, and I told him that the chef did a good job but whoever sold him the crabs shafted him. Actually I used a ruder turn of phrase than shafted, ending with the word "over". The chef and the staff made a great effort to have everything come out right, and most of it did, but who ever sold them the crabs did them wrong. They are having two more crab feasts, one in August and one in September, and I really don't know whether we'll give it another try. Having Green Flash West Coast IPA with your seafood is quite a treat, albeit at $9 a bottle, nothing you can get at Captain Pell's or even crab houses higher up the food chain, but the crabs sucked. I was still hungry when they brought the oysters Rockefeller, but that filled in the empty places and I left full.

Fernet Branca - this stuff is like crack. It's like Jagermeister without the syrup. Liquid 'ludes. Over ice with a tiny splash of creme de menthe. Complete shutoff of the frontal lobe. A little splash of absinthe, even more so. Especially on an empty stomach. Wheee!

Ktmoomau, excellent post and I agree with everything you say, especially the part about trial and error as you try to figure out your triggers. I thought I had basically healed my gut with an intensive regiment of probiotics and prebiotics so I've kept pushing the envelope on what I can tolerate but sometimes -- often -- the envelope pushes back. Ain't nobody's business but mine.

Actually the egg poached just fine, but there was almost no white. Some of it dripped through the strainer, and the rest got stuck in the strainer holes. This perforated spoon might work, but I am reluctant to pay $32 to find out. We have been eating poached eggs every weekend using a buttered latex bowl, which works well but doesn't provide the beautiful oval with a creamy center as shown in the video. Edit: it appears to be only $19.95 on Amazon. For $20, I'll try it.

Well said. Dean, I have posted before but it bears repeating, I really appreciate the fact that you indicate on your menus which items containe gluten and which items can be prepared without gluten. Similar for vegan and vegetarian. I find it very respectful.

Yes, Pat, the lady was clueless. Personally, if I were her chef, I would not have held her up to ridicule in a forum like Huffington Post. I also won't willingly eat at a restaurant where the chef is irritated by dietary choices. Just because you cook it, don't expect me to eat it. I saw on teh internets that Jimmy Fallon ridiculed people who said they were gluten free but had no idea what gluten is. Didn't actually watch the video, would have found it excruciating, probably. Just because people who espouse an idea are stupid, doesn't mean the idea is stupid. I can, and have, after swearing off wheat, eaten truly excellent wheat bread slathered with butter without dying from anaphylactic shock. And spent embarassing hours on the toilet afterwards. I may be a moron for that, but at least I knew what I was doing, and took the risk freely and of my own will.

Tried the poached egg thing. It didn't work. I started with extremely fresh eggs, did they sink? Check. Cracked into a mesh strainer exactly like the one in the video, check. Drained off the runny white, check. Water 180 degrees, check. Poured into the water from a bowl, didn't work. The whites made little strings and there wasn't enough white to make a beautiful poached egg like in the video. Mostly a poached egg yolk. Kept the egg in the strainer and put the strainer in the water and tilted it to the side. Mostly a poached yolk with a little white, plus I had to scrub congealed egg white from the strainer! Add this to a long list of video advice I saw on the Internet that did not work, right up there with peeling garlic by shaking it between two bowls.